Honorary Doctorates

The faculty of sustainability awards honorary doctorates to individuals with special merits in the field of sustainability sciences as part of the annual Dies Academicus. 

Prof Dr Elke Weber is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor of Energy and Environment and Associate Director of Education at the Andlinger Institute, as well as Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs. She is a Fellow of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University.

Her research draws on psychology, economics, sociology, ecology and evolutionary biology to study and model the decisions of individuals and groups as they deal with uncertainty and trade-offs in the face of complex threats such as climate change. Over the course of her career, Elke Weber has contributed her expertise to numerous organisations in the US and beyond. She has served on several National Academy of Sciences advisory committees on the human dimensions of global change, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board, and a German government committee on carbon neutrality.

Elke Weber was also the lead author of the fifth and sixth assessment reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 2016 she received the Distinguished Achievement Award of the Society for Risk Analysis and in 2023 the Patrick Suppes Prize of the American Philosophical Society.

The philosopher and economist Prof. Dr. h. c. R. Edward Freeman, PhD developed the stakeholder theory, which has since become a fundamental model for economic and social research. According to the traditional view of the company, management must ultimately always focus on the shareholders or owners of the company and management has a financial obligation to prioritise their needs. According to the stakeholder theory, however, other groups are also involved and of key importance to management, including governments, political groups, social organisations, trade unions, financiers, suppliers, employees and customers. Even competitors count as stakeholders. Their status is determined on the one hand by how they are influenced by the company and on the other by their ability to influence the company and its other stakeholders. This change of perspective makes it possible to find more sustainable and comprehensive solutions to economic problems and the management of companies.

Edward Freeman is a professor at the Darden School of the University of Virginia, USA. His research has been honoured with the Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement by the World Resources Institute and the Aspen Institute, among others.

James Clark of the University of York is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry, where he leads the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence. He has a PhD in chemistry and researches the application of green technologies to solve chemical challenges. His work aims to make chemical processes more environmentally friendly and energy efficient, thereby contributing to sustainable development. He plays a key role in this by networking with stakeholders from politics, business and science, which makes him a pioneer of science-based interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research approaches. Because his work solves challenges of sustainable development beyond chemistry, the Faculty of Sustainability became aware of his contribution to social change.

Alongside his work as a faculty member, moved by his conviction that science must make fundamental contributions to overcoming social challenges, Michael Crow initiated impressive  development processes within Columbia University. Results that he shaped and implemented include, first, the Earth Institute, one of the leading research institutes in the world in the field of environmental and sustainability studies. He played a decisive role in advancing the establishment of the Earth Institute and served as its director for more than five years. Another such result, also at Columbia University, was the Center for Science,  Policy and Outcomes he established. The Center’s goal is to improve the contributions of science and technology to justice and the quality of life as societal interests.

With his vision of a “New American University,” since 2002 Michael Crow, as University persident, has fundamentally transformed Arizona State University with numerous inter- and transdiciplinary schools and a center, developing the university into one of the country’s leading public universities. 

Michael Crow is one of the pioneers in the field of transformative sustainability science, whose intellectual and institutional contributions to the establishment of this field of science can hardly be overestimated. Like no other scientist, he shaped the model of a university for the (civil) society of the 21st century and successfully put it into practice.

Prof. Nilüfer Göle zur Dr. phil. h.c 

Professor of Sociology at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris (EHESS).

The sociologist Nilüfer Göle is head of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociale in Paris. In her works, she deals with the criticism of Turkish modernity, the problems of identity and the difficulties of Islamist movements in Turkey. 

The sustainability scientist William C. Clark has been Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government since 1987. He has played a decisive role in shaping the new research field of sustainability science.

Prof. Clark researches complex problems arising in the context of human-environment systems with the objective to contribute to the sustainable development of these systems.

He was last honored for his research and lecturing activities in 2011 with the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for Excellence in Teaching awarded by Harvard College. In addition, he was awarded the German Humboldt Prize in 2002, the Manuel Carballo Teaching Award of the John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2000, and the MacArthur Prize, also known as a „genius grant“, in 1983.

Prof. Dr.Dr. rer. nat. h.c. Claude Boutron is one of the world's leading researchers in the field of glaciology and atmospheric chemistry. In his impressive career, he has devoted himself primarily to the study of atmospheric geophysical cycles of heavy metals and their influence by human activities, from antiquity to the present day. Claude Boutron is Professor of Atmospheric Geochemistry at the University Joseph Fourier of Grenoble and Director of the "European Research Course on Atmospheres".

One of the most spectacular results of research conducted by Prof. Boutron is scientific proof that the air in the northern hemisphere was already contaminated with lead and copper in the Roman period, i.e. long before the industrial revolution. Furthermore, Mr. Boutron has furnished detailed proof of the rise and fall of atmospheric lead concentrations between the 1930s and the 1960s. During this period, lead concentrations in both the northern and southern hemisphere rose considerably due to the fact that lead was increasingly added to gasoline used for modern transportation. This can be clearly observed even today in the Greenland ice sheet. Current research work of Claude Boutron shows signs of a contamination of the hemisphere with platinum, palladium, and rhodium from automobile exhaust catalysts.